


Once Upon a Time in Mos Shuuta

by loreleissong



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loreleissong/pseuds/loreleissong
Summary: Teemo the Hutt collects many a thing, especially "useful" beings. Jarla just happens to be one of those. Hutts are notorious villians and Teemo is no exception though Jarla Hutt is no saint either and if given the chance Teemo would meet his death at their hands. Unfortunately he knows all their secrets.Set before Palpatine's death, but after Order 66.





	Once Upon a Time in Mos Shuuta

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: Character speaks negatively of a differently-abled individual of their race. Some minimally described violence. Slavery. Notes at end.

Jarla synced the remote control to the tiny figurine of a feathered Banthria bird in their hand. With one flick of their finger on the remote a tiny needle slid out from the upraised wing and would have embedded into flesh had it’s creator not known where to place their fingers so as to avoid it. Pleased Jarla reset it and flicked it open a couple more times before they reached for a tiny pot of viscous liquid. Grabbing some gloves and a brush they carefully coated the needle and with another flick of the remote returned the needle to it’s starting place. All was ready as Teemo had requested.

Jarla boxed the little mechanical bird that was a novelty of craftsmanship in a universe obsessed with electronics. Well it did have some very minute electronics to make it sing, but those also hid the part necessary for the remote control to connect and deflect any suspicion should it be scanned.

They headed down the hall from their workshop to Teemo the Hutt’s receiving room and office. Teemo was already there smoking his hooka and scrolling through cargo shipping reports as Strek updated him on the latest prices of goods. Most of the universe thought of the Hutt race only as manipulative and criminal. While it was true that they cared little for bipedal regulations they were also better at numbers and predicative economics than most bipedals gave them credit for. They also forgot that they were the apex predators on their original homeworld and they still were even disadvantaged in a universe that favored bipedals. Most bipedals learned that too late, but Jarla had grown up around Hutts. They knew better than to ever forget that when dealing with any of them. Especialy their master Teemo who could destroy Jarla as quickly as he had once saved them as a young Huttlet. Teemo’s eyes flicked up as soon as Jarla was at the threshold of the door then flicked back to the datapad in his hand. Jarla knew that the casual disinterest was anything but and Teemo was still very much aware of everything around him including Jarla. 

“Jarla, come in. I assume you have the gift I requested for the guest we’re receiving tonight?” 

Jarla started to move forward when the light of the bright Tatooine sun shining through the windows hit them in the eyes. They blinked. They turned their head closing their eyes as they started watering in pain.

“Master Teemo, the sunlight perhaps the shades . . .”

“Nonsense I need the light to inspect your work, quit stalling and come over here. I know you know how to deal with the light.”

Jarla’s flicking tail stilled momentarily before they nodded. They pulled the expansive hood up on the half cloak they always wore that ended at their shoulders and with closed eyes they leaned down onto their belly and started slithering their thin pale frame forward grotesquely like a blinded snake instead of as the noble hefty slug every other normal Hutt would move like. They inched forward into the room their head low to the ground blindly feeling with one hand until they made it up to the dais where Teemo’s chaise sat.

So close and so low to the ground they could feel his pleasure as his thumped a pleased pattern on the ground with his tail and the aura around him radiated a sick pleasure. Jarla knew he had kept it that bright intentionally. Hutts can see all the way into the UV spectrum and low light. He hadn’t really needed that much light. It simply amused him to humble one of his kind so thoroughly. 

Raising only partway up with their head bowed, Jarla raised the little mechanical bird up to be inspected. Teemo motioned to Strek and the creature walked over to grab the item to hand to him. Relieved of their burden Jarla lowered back down nose to the ground as they tried to hide from the light. They did own a pair of goggles that blocked all but the UV spectrum for Jarla which would have prevented their humiliating crawl across the room. However Teemo only allowed Jarla to wear them when outside on a job or in Jarla’s own quarters and workshop. 

“Very good. Very very good.” Teemo pressed a button and the bird began to sing. Jarla slowly reached up to the clasp on their hood. As they pushed down it pushed the button on the little remote mechanism attached on the underside of it up against his collarbone. The button depressed and the little needle in the breast of the bird popped up. Jarla heard a surprised yelp and knew it had hit flesh. Teemo’s tail started thumping faster. Jarla could hear coughing and strangled breathing. Jarla could sense a life ebbing. Jarla dared a peek up feeling the light through their thin eyelids. A shadow stumbled near and fell to the ground by them. 

Jarla pushed the button again retracting the needle as Teemo’s laughter started as a low rumble in his belly before echoing throughout the room. Strek’s thrashing and wheezing lasted only briefly before their lungs and throat closed in on them completely. It was soon all over. 

“Hahaha, Did you really think that would get me Jarla?” His powerful tail slid under Jarla’s chin forcing their head up painfully into the stinging light. 

“No Master, my deadly creations are only for you. I have no poisons that could hurt one such as yourself.”

Lies and truths, two sides same coin they had come to realize long ago. No, this piece didn’t hold poison deadly to Teemo this time. Their deadly creations were only made under Teemo’s orders, but Jarla hated making the deadly ones. The machines they made were meant to be beautiful and useful and enjoyed by many not the perverted weapons of assassination Teemo liked instead. Jarla knew that likely the only way Teemo and Jarla would end their odd little dance was the day one or both of them was dead.

Teemo slid out of the dais grabbing Jarla’s head and slammed it to the ground unhappy with the answer. “We both know that is a lie.”He reached over and grabbed the collar of Jarla’s cloak and pressed the button. Jarla coughed and wheezed as his fist pushed down on their esophagus and his bulk slid partially onto them. Holding them in place and making it difficult for the air sacs in their body to inflate. 

Teemo carefully grabbed the little bird from where it had fallen from Strek’s hand and rubbed the wing next to Jarla’s jaw. “Should we test it to see?”

Jarla couldn’t answer choked as they were. While the needle didn’t contain poison that could hurt Teemo, Jarla didn’t have a Hutt’s normal immunity. The wasting disease had left them with a weakened constitution in more ways than one. They could just as easily poison themself mixing any poison as they could killing one of Teemo’s rivals and enemies. Jarla knew one poke of that needle could very well end them. They trembled, projecting absolute submission to the angry Hutt above them. Anxious and unsure whether they welcomed an end or feared it in that moment.

Teemo luckily read it as fear. “Never forget who saved you when your brood parent disowned you. When you were to be taken to Nal Hutta and fed to the swamp to atone for the failure and disgrace your parent laid upon their Kadijic to brood a broken thing like you, it was I who saved you and I who can end you.”

With one swift motion Teemo tore off the clasp and remote. He slid off of Jarla and before the air could return to their air sacs he took his mighty tail and swung it against their chest flinging them across the floor to slam into the opposite wall.

Pain exploded across their body and into their eyes as the light once again flooded into their eyes now bereft of their hood. Breathing was ragged and painful. Jarla laid there unable to move. Eventually they heard the singing of the bird again. Jarla still couldn’t open their eyes, but instead they reached out sensing satisfaction and resignation as Teemo slithered and paced around the room. 

Eventually two pairs of feet came in and carried something out. Jarla assumed it was the body of the unfortunate Strek. Eventually the lights in the room dimmed and Jarla sat up leaning against the wall only semi-upright. They knew they weren’t alone even before they opened their eyes. Teemo was still there. They had long ago learned to recognize his presence his brand of aura in the ether of auras that crowded Jarla’s senses daily.

He came up to Jarla now, tsking. “I have lowered the blinds so you may open your eyes.” Jarla nodded. 

“Why do you do such things and provoke me, so my pet?” He prodded Jarla’s form checking for broken ribs and other damage. “It will be annoying to replace Strek, he was quite efficient.” He came to the cybernetic right hand that he had paid to replace Jarla’s useless deformed birth hand when he discovered their aptitude for mechanics. He tsked seeing one of the delicate fingers crushed from his great weight when he had held Jarla down.

Jarla hadn’t asked for a cybernetic hand. In fact they had managed quite a lot with only one good hand and a bit of creativity, but Teemo wanted to see what they could create with two good hands and Jarla had been grateful. So they had worked hard not to disappoint until they figured out what Teemo had truly desired their mechanical aptitude for and became disappointed by what they had to create now. 

“That will need to be fixed. It will be added on to what you owe me,” he noted tapping Jarla on the cheek as he let go of the hand.

“No need. I am able to fix that on my own now,” Jarla rasped.

“Well, well haven’t we progressed.” Teemo smiled. “But you still have a long way to go in service to me before you pay off the nice things I have gotten you over the years , so you could get to that point, my pet.” Teemo liked to dangle the possibility that Jarla wasn’t forever indebted to him and could somehow, someday pay off their indentured servitude Teemo. It was a game he liked to play among all his slaves. He liked to give them hope. Jarla grew up with Teemo. Jarla knew better. 

“Yes, Master. I haven’t forgotten.” Jarla started picking up the tools scattered around them that had fallen out of their waist pouch. 

Teemo flicked an errant tool over into his hand. He tapped the small wrench against his bottom lip reminiscing as he moved seemingly casually, but always one step ahead of Jarla and whatever tool they were trying to retrieve at the moment.

“You were such a cute and pathetic Huttlet when you were born my pet. I had such a fascination with oddities when I was a child. My parent once told me how I collected the most useless things from outside and cried when they would try to toss them out. If it wasn’t for that, you would have been tossed to the wilds as well. A proud Kadijic Council wouldn’t normally let something like you live, but my parent must have been quite the bargainer or more likely..” and here Teemo laughed, “ they held something on your parent and the clan where they couldn’t say no.” 

Jarla knew this to be VERY much the truth; not only because Teemo liked to often tell them as much, but because they had often heard it whispered behind their back how much of an oddity the whole situation was. If Teemo hadn’t been such a prized child whose parent couldn’t deny him anything then Jarla would have been abandoned to their death and the beasts of the swamps of Nal Hutta shortly upon leaving the brood pouch.

“They hate that I still have you around, you know.” He glanced over at Jarla. It was no secret that many of the Hutts openly hated Teemo’s ‘pet’ the abomination. As much as Jarla hated being under Teemo’s thumb it would be much worse with anyone else and Jarla would have died long ago.

Jarla paused and looked up at Teemo nodding. “Yes Master, among our kind, only you care for poor Jarla.” 

Teemo nodded once in approval. “It’s good you remember this, I think you forget that sometimes.” 

Teemo moved once again setting down the last tool from his hand and then picking it back up again before Jarla could grab it. He did this a few more times laughing at his favorite game to play with Jarla before Jarla’s annoyance got the better of them. 

Just as Teemo’s fingers were closing around the wrench once again; this last time Jarla tried to dart out a little faster, to will their arms and fingers to stretch a little farther to grab it out from underneath Teemo. But they could both see that Jarla was going to miss it by just a couple of inches no matter how much Jarla tried to will it into their hand. Teemo was just closer and quicker.

Except suddenly he wasn’t. They both watched as Teemo suddenly grasped air where metal should have been. They both watched as that tiny wrench suddenly flew several inches into Jarla’s outstretched fingers. Surprise registered in both of their features.

Jarla didn’t know what happened, but they doubted Teemo would be happy about it. Confused and scared they tried to run, but Teemo was already at the doorway.

He grabbed them before they could escape, “My gut is never wrong my pet. I knew there was something special about you all those years ago, even as a child.” His face pulled into a huge smile, but there was no warmth in it. Jarla knew that smile. It was the smile he got whenever he finally held in his hand another long sought collector’s piece.

“You really ARE quite the abomination Jarla.” He leaned in even closer his breath hot against their cheek as he whispered. “I know what you are now Pet. Try to ever leave me and you will have not just me or the Kadijics, but a whole galaxy out to destroy you.” 

This time when Jarla shivered, it truly was from sheer terror.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a story I wrote to explain the motivation behind betrayal and leaving for a character I created for Edge of the Empire. It felt strong enough to stand alone as a one-shot drabble so I decided to post it here. Just sort of a posit on how a force-sensitive Hutt might happen when lore seems to indicate they normally tend to be immune? What if it was to make up for some other deficit? Thus my albino, wasting disease, light sensitive Hutt happened. (The albinoism and wasting disease had been noted I think in former Legends lore)  
> Speaking of lore regarding the gendered pronouns. There were different theories on whether Hutt race has genders or not. Former Legends lore had them as non-gendered and reproducing asexually. Once the company was sold and the formerly Canon stuff became Legends the Hutt race became gendered but Jabba who was male had a son but not wife? So I decided to resolve the issue by having Hutts that deal primarily with bipedal humanoids (such as Teemo who is referred to as male in Edge of Empire) having the tendency to choose gendered references while other Hutts won't and will continue to use non-gendered references for themselves. Hence the difference in the way I have gendered Teemo but not gendered Jarla's pronouns. Anyhow not sure if I will write more separate from what happens in game, but will see if I get inspired. Hoping it will kickstart me to write some more fiction in this or other fandoms as I do enjoy writing when I can convince myself to actually sit down and do it. :)


End file.
